The U.S. economy continued to shed a stunning amount of jobs in the last month of 2008, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday, but the loss was basically in line with Wall Street was expecting.

The U.S. Labor Department reported U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell by 524,000 in the month of December, marking 12 consecutive months of job declines since the nation’s economy entered recession in December 2007.

Economists interviewed by Thomson Reuters had expected the U.S. economy would lose approximately 500,000 jobs.

There were significant downward revisions to the October and November job losses, piling an additional 154,000 job losses for those months on top of the 524,000 December job loss figure.

For all of 2008, the nation lost 2.6 million jobs, with 1.9 million of those jobs being lost in the last four months of the year. That's the most jobs lost in a year since 1945, the year that World War II ended and the nation's war-time economy transitioned to a civilian economy. 

The nation’s unemployment rate jumped to 7.2%, the Labor Department said, from a 6.8% figure the month prior. That’s the highest unemployment rate for the nation since January 1993 -- the month President Bill Clinton took office.

"It was a truly dreadful report," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist with PNC Financial in Pittsburgh. "And I expect these job losses will be revised down even further.

The official definition of the unemployment rate is the percentage of people who do not have a job but are actively seeking work.

The number of persons who worked part-time hours but would have preferred full-time work rose to 8.0 million. That figure has risen by 3.4 million from a year ago.

According to the Labor Department, all major sectors of the economy lost jobs, save two -- the education and health care. Those sectors added 45,000 jobs during the month.

Construction jobs fell by 101,000 during the month, while manufacturing jobs fell by 149,900. Professional and business service jobs, usually considered the high-quality, high-paying jobs economists and investors like to see created, fell by 113,000 during the month.

"This report underscores the widespread nature of the recession and the continuing fall-off in real estate and underwriting employment means no quick fix for the segment which led the downward spiral: housing," said FOX Business Chief Economist Mark Lieberman.

The average hourly earnings did come in better than expected -- up 0.3% during the month to $18.36 an hour.

Economists said they don't expect the next few months to provide any relief on the labor front. Aluminum giant Alcoa (AA) announced earlier this week it would lay off 13,500 from its worldwide workforce, while Walgreen (WAG) and oil company Schlumberger (SLB) both announced they would lay off 1,000 workers each.

Hoffman said he expects the nation's unemployment rate to rise to at least 8.5% by the time this recession ends, which would be the highest unemployment rate since the 1974 recession.